Paris Vistas by Helen Davenport Gibbons

Author:Helen Davenport Gibbons [Gibbons, Helen Davenport]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, World
ISBN: 9789353972530
Google: zrM8zQEACAAJ
Publisher: ALPHA ED
Published: 2020-01-15T16:02:44+00:00

CHAPTER XX

THE PROBLEM OF HOUSING

WHEN you are in Paris without children you can get along in a hotel or a pension: and you can probably live as cheaply as, if not more cheaply than, in a home of your own. There are several combinations. Inexpensive rooms (in normal times) can be found in good hotels: and there are lots of hotels that take only roomers. You do not, as at a pension, have to be tied down to at least two meals where you live. The advantages of a furnished-room or a pension are: easy to find in the quarter you wish to live in; no bother about service; and no necessity to tie yourself up with a lease. But if you are making a protracted stay, it is wise to weigh at the beginning the disadvantages with the advantages. You get tired of the food; you have to associate daily with people whom you do not like; and—especially if you are of my sex—you have no place to receive your friends. I think in the end most people who go to Paris and who follow the line of least resistance, either because it is that or because they have the idea that they can learn French quicker in a "French pension," regret having missed the opportunity of a home of their own, of a chez soi, as the French say. For you really cannot feel that you belong in Paris unless you are keeping house. "Be it ever so humble," you can set up your own home, if you are determined to do so. There are innumerable wee apartments—a hall big enough to hang up your coat and hat, a kitchenette, and a room where your bed can be a couch disguised with a rug and pillows during the day. Studios furnish another opportunity of making a home of your own. Of course, during the war and since Paris has been overcrowded. But there will be a return to normal conditions.

And if you have a family—even one baby—hotel or pension life becomes unendurable.

When Herbert came back from Turkey in the summer of 1913, we found the three little rooms and kitchen of Thirty-eight Rue du Montparnasse too small for us. The first thing Herbert did was to "give notice." The Paris system of renting is very advantageous if one is looking for a modest apartment. Your lease is by the term—a term being three months—and can be canceled upon giving one term's notice. This means that you're tied down for only six months in the beginning, and after that for only three months. One can buy simple furniture, as we did in the Rue Servandoni, and sell it at the end of the year without a great loss. It is possible to rent an apartment for a year, furnish it and sell out, at about the same price you would pay for a furnished apartment. And you will have had the pleasure of being surrounded by your own things.

The proposition of a furnished apartment looks better than it is.

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